Work Text:
Mark lives life on the count. It comes with the job.
Counting down to ten before walking on stage, watching the clock tick by between outfit changes to be back out right on time,
five,
six,
seven,
eighting in his head so he doesn’t miss a step in a choreography. Reciting his members’ names to himself so he doesn’t start his verse too early or too late, do-re-mi-fa-soling so he won’t get the key wrong, closing his eyes and counting his breaths
(one-in
one-out,
one-in
one-out,
one-in
one-out) so he won’t pass out mid-performance.
Tonight, there are one,
two,
three,
four,
six hours left on the clock for his alarm to go off. He shouldn’t drink more than one,
two,
three glasses of soju if he doesn’t wake up with a hangover. One,
two,
three,
four are the impatient knocks on his door before Mark pulls it open.
“What are you doing here?”
Donghyuck arches his right eyebrow, his mouth twitches to the side, his body swings left when he takes a step closer. His words are more alcohol than breath when he talks into Mark’s face.
“Got you out of bed?” he says, all smirks and flushed cheeks. “You were dreaming ‘bout me, weren’t you?”
If this were to happen a year ago, Mark would’ve probably fake-hurled in mock disgust. He would’ve pushed Donghyuck back with a light punch on the shoulder, would’ve scoffed and frowned and muttered, shut the hell up, dude. But the sly tone of Donghyuck’s voice has gotten way too familiar in the past few months—so has the pink tip of his tongue slipping between his teeth when he gives Mark an eyes-mouth-eyes look.
(How did it start again?
It was somewhere in Asia. Was it on their way to Jakarta? Or maybe on their flight back from Bangkok? Mark can’t remember properly, but he recalls his hair was still bleached blonde and long enough for the fried tips to tickle his neck every time he rolled his head on the backrest of the airplane seat to glance at Donghyuck.
He can’t remember how the conversation started, either, but he remembers how it ended.
“It’s okay if you like guys, hyung,” Donghyuck said, with that slurred drag his words gain when he’s sleepy. “You’re not the only one.”
Mark counted one, two, three, four, five, six moles on Donghyuck’s face. One on his bottom lip. Two visible down his throat. One breath for each of them.
“I like girls.”
Donghyuck blinked once. Eyes-mouth-eyes. He blinked twice, and his mouth twitched to the side.
“I never said you didn’t.”)
“I wasn’t sleeping yet,” Mark says.
Donghyuck walks in without being invited. Mark steps aside and lets him through without being asked to.
He watches Donghyuck kick his sandals off and walk the hallway with bare feet like he owns it—and he might, giving how often he swings by.
Donghyuck is underdressed even if it’s already summer. He wears only a short-sleeved white tee and the pair of washed-gray sweatpants Mark saw him slip into after practice.
(“Wanna come get dinner?” Donghyuck asked, pants pulled up mid-thigh in the changing room.
Mark had just enough time to count one, two, three, four moles on his left thigh before the skin was covered with gray cotton fabric.
He checked the hour on his phone, calculated ten hours before he had to be up and awake again. “Too tired. Imma just chill at home.”
“You never say no when the sun’s out, hyung. Does a night date with me scare you?”)
“You cold?” Mark asks now.
Donghyuck takes off his cap, throws it on the couch without looking when he passes by the open living room. His hair is soft-looking, shower-puffed, wavy and frizzy—how it always gets when he doesn’t dry it properly, uses no more than a towel to make it stop dripping.
He walks straight to the kitchen, rounds the island, and only looks at Mark when he’s got two palms flat against the marble top, the open bottle of soju standing between his arms.
“Why? You wanna warm me up, hyung?”
Mark rolls his eyes, but he walks Donghyuck’s steps until they stand shoulder to shoulder.
“What did you drink with your dinner? Are you drunk?”
“Nah, that’s why I’m here.” Donghyuck grabs the bottle of soju and knocks it down. His bottom lip shines wet after, peeled and makeup free. Mark can count the one mole there. “Do you wanna destress with me?”
The lights are off in the kitchen, the dim glint that spills into the room comes from the orangy bulbs in the living room. It shouldn’t be enough to make the mouth of the bottle twinkle like it does when Donghyuck offers it to Mark.
Mark has had two glasses tonight. He guesses he can afford two more before he stops the count.
Apparently, he takes too long to decide, because he blinks once and suddenly Donghyuck is pushing the sticky rim of the bottle into his lips.
Donghyuck’s high-pitched laughter bounces off the kitchen tiles as he moves closer, free hand palming up Mark’s back, from his shoulder blades to his nape. He grabs him firm like that, fingers digging deep into the sides of Mark’s neck as he nudges Mark’s head back with the bottle, as if to feed him like a baby.
The soju is sweet, bottle mouth-warm.
Mark gulps one, two, three times before he’s laughing too much to keep drinking—to keep counting. He pushes Donghyuck back with a light shove against his chest, has to rub his mouth clean with the back of his hand when some soju drips down his chin.
Donghyuck stumbles back a little, only to bounce closer in the same airless breath.
“Good job, baby,” he says in English, words bent into an exaggerated coo, as if talking to a child.
His hand is a bit too rough on Mark’s head, half-drunk careless already, when he pets the back of it, where it’s been recently trimmed. Mark swats him off and Donghyuck stumbles again, hip knocking into the side of the kitchen island.
Instead of complaining about the hit, Donghyuck pushes himself up on the counter. Mark watches his bare feet swing in the dim-lit room, heels bumping into the closed cabinet door one after the other—like the count of a steady heartbeat (one-two, one-two, one-two).
“Get me something stronger, hyung.”
Mark falls into a crouch to pull open the next cabinet. “What do you want? I’ve got more soju, makgeolli, um, some red wine in the fridge, too, and—”
The bump-bump-bumping of Donghyuck’s heels stops and he nudges Mark’s shoulder with his bare left foot. His toes wrinkle up the fabric of Mark’s shirt.
Donghyuck’s got one mole on his ankle, right below the bone. Mark knows he’d get to count more if he got his hand around it and pushed the cotton up Donghyuck’s leg.
“Whatever you want, hyung.”
(And where were they the last time Mark heard this? Or, at least, the last time it felt like this.
Was it Europe or was it America? His hair was black again, still long.
He can’t remember what the hotel room looked like or what led the conversation there. All he remembers is the empty bottle of wine between them, the sound of his own tipsy laughter, the redness sticking to the wet inner flesh of Donghyuck’s bottom lip when he pouted.
“What am I gonna do with you, Donghyuck-ah?” Mark asked, palm pressed to Donghyuck’s cheek to turn his face away so he would stop staring.
Donghyuck’s fingers curled the thinness of Mark’s wrist. “Whatever you want, hyung.”
Five hours on the clock for his alarm to go off.
Four glasses of red wine in his system.
Three close-eyed breaths to stop himself from leaning in.)
So tonight Mark uncorks a cold bottle of red wine and fetches two glasses from his cupboard. All the while Donghyuck’s feet go bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump as if counting the seconds they spend together.
Mark half-fills their wine cups and lets Donghyuck’s hand engulf his entirely. His fingers glide across the back of Mark’s hand before he grabs the glass properly.
Donghyuck chinks their glasses once. “Cheers.”
By the second glass, Donghyuck’s features twist into a full-face frown after a long sip.
“It’s already lukewarm, hyung,” he says, smacking his lips together before he sticks his tongue out in a grimace, already redder than natural. “This is disgusting.”
Mark rolls his eyes and lets his fingers glide across the back of Donghyuck’s hand before he takes the glass out of his grasp.
“Go get me the ice, crybaby.”
Donghyuck jumps off the kitchen island with an oof. He pads toward the freezer, his bare feet slapping the kitchen tiles loudly.
The floor has to be cold against his soles. He is still underdressed for the night. Ice is probably not the brightest of his ideas—not at 4 in the morning, at least.
There are one,
two,
three,
four,
five hours left on the clock for Mark’s alarm to go off.
He waits, rolls the glass between his fingers as he hears the rumble of Donghyuck’s tipsy hands struggling with the bag of ice. The wine they are drinking is a deep red, blood-toned, so thick it hides the shape of Mark’s fingers around the stem when he looks into it from the top.
“You need help?” he asks, eyes down on the drink
Donghyuck hums a negative, and then his bare feet are padding closer, shoulder brushing against Mark’s.
The glass of wine chinks against the marble countertop when Mark sets it down. He turns to Donghyuck with a spread hand for the ice, only to find him dripping cold down his chin, lips stretched around a cube tightly held between his teeth.
Rolling his eyes again, Mark goes to grab the ice out of Donghyuck’s mouth, but he gets swatted away. Donghyuck shakes his head when Mark tries again, grunting around the cube, and levels him with a long look.
Donghyuck’s cheeks are lit up a reddish pink, the kind of tone Mark knows you’d get if you stroked his face with wine fingertips. His eyes are fluttery and blown black, hair curled in frizzy waves over his forehead. The ice cube between his stretched-out lips drips again. A drop of freezing water jumps off his chin to fall on his neck, a slow slide over the mole on his throat.
Adam’s apple bobbing, Donghyuck swallows once before the drop of water reaches the mole above the dip between his collarbones.
Mark doesn’t realize he’s been staring until Donghyuck touches his mouth, fingers pressing in to find the wet inside of Mark’s bottom lip. He wonders if he’s stained wine red there, if Donghyuck’s fingertips will turn rosy with it.
“You need to stop playing,” Mark whispers when Donhghyuck’s wet fingertips fall to his chin.
(Mark remembers this one, too. In Korea, not too many days ago, they got one,
two,
three hours for themselves between practice and practice.
Here’s how Mark chose to spend them: head on his pillow and arms numb for holding his phone above his face for too long.
donghyuck
how about a kiss
you
dont play donghyuckie
donghyuck
booooo
you are not funny hyung
i just yawned
you
cause its not a joke
not to me)
Donghyuck shakes his head again and takes a step closer into Mark’s space, chin tilted up.
On stage, on the days a show feels thrice longer than it actually is, when tiredness makes his chest tight, sometimes Mark does this thing where he counts his own breaths in his head to make sure he won’t pass out. Breath in,
count to four,
breath out,
count to four,
and repeat.
His chest feels just like that now that he is leaning closer to Donghyuck, muscle wrapped too tight around bone, lungs constrained inside of his rib cage, his squeezed heart pumping in his throat because it barely has the space to fit. But he can’t count his breath now because he stops breathing altogether the second his nose bumps into Donghyuck’s.
It’s a little mind-bending, the kind of heavy rush that goes through him whenever he walks onstage. Like walking on a tightrope with a spotlight shining down on him, lighting him up from head to toe for the entire universe to watch his next step, waiting for a mistake that will fuck up the entire choreography. Waiting for him to miss the count.
Mark stops breathing altogether in case he breathes too hard and ruins it all by falling too hard. He opens his mouth, tucks his tongue behind his teeth, retracts his lips over his gums so they won’t touch Donghyuck’s once he wraps his own mouth around the dripping ice cube.
He tugs once, but Donghyuck won’t let go.
Eyes still open, Mark can see Donghyuck’s right eyelid fluttering three times before it shuts. They are too close for Mark to see both of his eyes.
Another tug and Donghyuck groans softly, but he still won’t let go.
He doesn’t let go until Mark gets a hand around his throat, palm flush against Donghyuck’s Adam’s apple, thumb pressed to the spot where his carotid pumps with every beat of his heart.
Mark is used to this count mid-concerts, too, between black curtains, during every perfect-timed outfit change. He’s used to grabbing Donghyuck’s arm, above the wrist bone, and squeezing him into a tight fist because Mark’s never learned how to search for a pulse properly. Used to counting Donghyuck’s beats up to thirty, sometimes sixty for good measure, to make sure the stillness between each of them lasts the same.
Donghyuck’s heart skips a beat now, when Mark tugs at the ice cube again, and his teeth ease up with another soft groan that shakes into Mark’s palm.
It skips a beat, but it’s not worrisome. It is just sweet.
“Who said I was playing?” Donghyuck asks when Mark pulls back. “I don’t play dirty, hyung.”
Mark doesn’t throw the ice cube into the glass. He draws it into his mouth with his tongue, watches Donghyuck watch him suck on it until it melts against his palate.
Donghyuck is breathless, still close-eyed, lips glinting red. He kept the ice cube between his teeth for too long, it dripped down his chin enough to draw a small dark circle around the collar of his white tee.
Underdressed for the night and wet. Mark should get his hands on him. He should pull that damp shirt off Donghyuck’s body and offer him a dry one.
(“Don’t play him,” Renjun said during the last water break of tonight’s latest practice.
Mark laughed under his breath. He couldn’t help it.
He had his eye on Donghyuck, who was dancing in front of the mirror wall, going over the steps in lousy movements, never quite stopping to rest, always moving. Look away from him for
one
second and he will be working too fast. And then he wonders why his heart can’t keep up.
He was shirtless, Donghyuck. Shirtless and damp under the high lights of the practice room, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, flushed pink on the cheeks and chest.
Renjun knocked Mark on the shoulder with the cold butt of a full water bottle. Still, Mark didn’t look away.
“I’m serious, Mark. He’s not as tough as he wants us to believe.”
They shouldn’t even be talking about this. Renjun wasn’t even supposed to know. Mark has never told him, about the strings pulling, about the space shrinking, about Donghyuck smiling lopsided with his tongue between his teeth like a challenge—like a game Mark shouldn’t bet on because he’d end up stripped down, of everything.
Mark has never told Renjun about the counting either—the inches between their skins, the days wasted yearning, the number of seconds he spends looking at Donghyuck—and how it stops when Donghyuck looks back.
“I think you’re worrying about the wrong one, Renjun-ah.”
Mark never got to hear Renjun’s answer, if he had one.
One,
two,
three claps and their choreographer yelled out, “On your feet! C’mon, on my count. Five,
six,
seven,
eight!”
He was shirtless, Donghyuck. Mark lost his footing.
“Again. From the top.”)
Mark wants to get Donghyuck out of his shirt, watch him stand on the tiles of his poorly illuminated kitchen, and count the moles on his chest until he goes dizzy with it.
And that’s the alcohol talking. Mark’s already had one glass too many. Wine always gets him needy, ticklish on the inside, warmed-up too honest to keep lines solid. It gets him light, like he needs arms around him and the feeling of skin on skin to keep himself on the ground.
It’s the alcohol talking.
He pushes his palm into Donghyuck’s cheek, turns Donghyuck’s face away so he will stop staring close-eyed, and turns himself around to fill up their glasses again.
After that, Mark loses count.
It is not that he is too drunk to keep up, he simply gets too distracted to keep counting. He will blame it on Donghyuck, on the half-drunk happy glint of his excited eyes when he tells embarrassing stories like Mark wasn’t there for all of them—like most of them aren’t about Mark.
With a grin so big it puffs out his cheeks, teeth tinted maroon by the wine, Donghyuck leans his forearms on the counter and his shoulder on Mark, and rambles away.
“You used to pray for everything, hyung,” he says, his shoulder shaking against Mark’s through his laughter. “Most things I get, but praying before scary movies? You were such a baby.”
Donghyuck’s glass of wine is sitting on the counter, but he keeps his left hand around the stem, anyway. His thumb rests on the smooth curve of the bowl, glides up and down, up and down, up and down the crystal in gentle caresses.
Mark distractedly thinks those fingers deserve to hold something softer—something warm.
“Not my fault,” Mark says, voice pitched high like a whine. “Scary movies, man. They’re scary.”
Donghyuck laughs again, louder, his slouch curving further as he bends over the counter. Mark watches the side of his face, the gape of his mouth, the scrunch of his nose, the squeeze of his eyes as his body shakes.
When Donghyuck straightens up again, Mark lets his head fall on his shoulder.
He fits himself in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck and stays there even if his ear hurts like this, trapped between his own skull and Donghyuck’s shoulder bone. It gets easier to handle this way—the needy simmering alcohol awakens under the skin—with Donghyuck’s body warmth tangled up with his.
“Scary movies are scary. You’re so eloquent, Mark.”
“Shut up.” Mark closes his eyes and nuzzles closer, swallows down a sigh when he feels Donghyuck’s head tipping to the side to rest on top of his. “I don’t pray before movies anymore.”
“Yeah, but you still cannot watch them. Jungwoo told me about it, you know? When he tried watching a scary movie with you and you ended up watching Madagascar. Really, hyung?”
“We wanted to watch a TV show, not a movie. And we ended up watching The Penguins of Madagascar, not Madagascar. At least get your facts straight, Donghyuck-ah.”
Donghyuck laughs again, and Mark groans when he gets nudged off the comfort of his shoulder. He looks up to find Donghyuck already looking at him, all crease-eyed and smiley, red on the teeth, on the cheeks, on the lips.
“You’re such a baby,” Donghyuck says, his eyes doing that glinting thing again.
They are so close, Mark can see all of Donghyuck’s moles like this—from the one on the side of his cheekbone to the one right over the dip of his collarbone. He tries to count them in his head, as if he doesn’t have them memorized, but gets distracted by the warmth of a hand on his face.
Donghyuck grabs him gently, fingers curled under Mark’s chin to keep him looking. His thumb is a light weight on Mark’s mouth, a careful glide up and down, up and down, up and down the plump curve of his bottom lip.
Mark’s tongue goes heavy and tingly between his teeth. He has to press it to the roof of his mouth so it won’t sneak out for a taste.
“You’re pouting,” Donghyuck says, his heavy blown eyes twitching as they follow the swipe of his own finger on Mark’s mouth. “Baby.”
(Donghyuck’s eyes looked just like this a few weeks ago, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol—it was all the excitement of the job well done.
Mark couldn’t forget this one: June 1st, Gocheok Sky Dome, Seoul.
The crowd’s cheers were still ringing in his ears when he walked offstage and behind black curtains, sweat clung to every inch of his body, his cheeks hurt from smiling.
They only had one,
two,
three,
four minutes and a half to strip down, towel themselves half-dry, and put on fresh clothes before they had to walk out again when Donghyuck cornered Mark into a dark nook right outside of their changing room.
“You’re doing amazing, hyung,” he said, fingertips digging into Mark’s shoulders, eyes dark and heavy and twinkling as he leaned closer. “So, so amazing.”
Donghyuck was smiling like a madman. He had the adrenaline of an excellent performance running just underneath his skin, so surface level Mark could see the goosebumps all over his arms.
Three minutes and god knows how many seconds left on the clock. Someone yelling Mark’s name at the other side of the door. Donghyuck’s smiling lips getting closer as his blown pupils did their eyes-mouth-eyes dance.
He was damp on his chest, Donghyuck. Damp on his heaving chest, through his shirt, up against Mark’s knuckles when he pressed his fists there, pushing him back.
“No time for games, Donghyuck-ah. Let’s go.”
Donghyuck’s lips twitched. The spaces between his heartbeats were all over the place under Mark’s hands.
“Boo,” he breathed out in Mark’s face, all pout and no smile. “So boring, hyung.”
How many minutes did they have again?)
Donghyuck’s hand isn’t on Mark’s mouth anymore. It crawls to the back of his head, cups the curve of his skull gently, runs fingers up and down the trimmed hair there—like he did earlier, but gone soft.
Mark pushes himself away from the kitchen island, just so he can face Donghyuck properly, and his full body tilts forward in its alcohol drowse. His forehead lands on Donghyuck’s shoulder and he closes his eyes, times his breaths with the slow swing of Donghyuck’s fingers through his hair.
“Baby,” Donghyuck repeats, whispering.
“Why did you come over?”
Hand clawing on the back of Mark’s head, Donghyuck’s nails scratch the scalp, down to the nape. Mark shudders, breathes out ragged through his nose.
Donghyuck is underdressed for the night, yet so cozy. When Mark nuzzles forward, the fabric of Donghyuck’s shirt rubs nice on his cheek, warmed up by Mark’s own breath.
“Told you. I wanted to drink with you,” Donghyuck says.
For the first time tonight, Mark lets his hands wander.
He palms at Donghyuck’s hips, feels up the elastic of his sweats through the stretch of his shirt, presses his fingers on the plump muscle that bulges soft right over it. Donghyuck is so soft all over. Mark needs him flesh to flesh, just to keep himself grounded.
The shirt should go off. So should the sweatpants. And everything else after them.
“Donghyuck, what did you come here for?” Mark asks again, and Donghyuck gasps when he’s pulled closer by the hips.
They stand chest to chest now. Mark leaves his hiding spot in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck and looks up, takes in his wine-flushed cheeks, the lust-blown eyes, the want-ajar lips.
Donghyuck’s got a mole on his Adam’s apple. It bobs when he swallows hard before he—
“Hyung,” he moans.
And now that Mark has left his hands wander once, they cannot stop.
Mark slides his fingers south, down the back, palms spread over the curve of Donghyuck’s ass. Donghyuck’s lips open wider—wide enough for Mark to see his pearl-white teeth. He could count them if his brain had strength for it. But he keeps getting distracted by the weight of Donghyuck’s gaze on him, his dizzying eyes-mouth-eyes dance.
The sweatpants got pockets on the back, two of them. Mark shoves both hands inside, pulls Donghyuck fully against him with a squeeze, opens his mouth to feel Donghyuck’s shallow sigh on his tongue.
It’s like a bite, the corner of the plastic wrapper pinching Mark’s right palm, trapped between his hand and Donghyuck’s ass. Mark doesn’t even have to look at it to know what it is, but he takes it out of the pocket anyway, and presses it to Donghyuck’s chest.
He looks up at Donghyuck’s blushing face. Down at the foil wrapper of lube in his hand. Back up at Donghyuck’s parted mouth.
“Why are you here, Donghyuck-ah?”
Donghyuck’s fingers tighten on the back of Mark’s nape, and then he’s leaning in.
The closer he gets, the less of him Mark can see. He tries to count the moles on Donghyuck’s cheek, but it’s difficult to do so with his eyes closed and Donghyuck’s mouth on his, so he counts them in his mind, by heart.
The kiss is a soft thing. Warm, too, despite the amount of ice Donghyuck dumped into his glass earlier. Mark keeps his mouth parted and lets himself be kissed slowly, dragged out like the slurred words of a tipsy man, wet like the collar of Donghyuck’s shirt.
Under Mark’s hand, Donghyuck’s heart skips a beat. And it’s not worrisome, it’s just sweet.
That’s when Mark kisses him back. He pushes at Donghyuck’s warm tongue with his, shoves it back into Donghyuck’s own mouth only to chase after it until Donghyuck gets eager enough to show teeth.
They pull back and Mark’s chest is doing that thing again, where it gets so tight it aches. He should start counting his intakes of breath, but he isn’t even sure if he’s still breathing.
Donghyuck’s got moles on his cheek. Mark is touching them now. He is cupping Donghyuck’s wine red cheek with his free hand and dancing his thumb from mole to mole to mole to mole to—
“Don’t play me, Donghyuck-ah.”
Donghyuck covers Mark’s hand with his own. He shakes his head no, and it looks like he’s nuzzling into the crook of Mark’s palm.
“I’m not,” he says, and turns his chin to place a fleeting kiss on Mark’s hand. “I just want you.”
Mark has been months on the tightrope now, repeating to himself the reasons this was a bad idea like a mantra, automatically, like counting up to ten again and again and again. Right now, he barely knows what numbers are.
It is so easy, falling against the kitchen island with his hand tight around the soft warmth of Donghyuck’s hips, pulling him into his own body to share heat.
(“You wanna warm me up, hyung?”
Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes.
Six of them. One for each mole on his pretty face.)
Mark doesn’t know how many hours they’ve got left on the clock before his alarm goes off, but it feels like they kiss for a lifetime.
It is slow and lazy, clumsy with both of their mouths tasting of red wine, warm as it can get.
Mark gets his hand around Donghyuck’s throat and kisses him deep, again and again, making it longer for each beat Donghyuck’s heart misses. He kisses him and kisses him until Donghyuck’s mouth turns puffy, and then he slides the foil between Donghyuck’s smiling teeth and makes him bite it open.
Donghyuck is underdressed for the night, so Mark doesn’t get him out of his clothes.
Instead, he shoves his hand down the back of Donghyuck’s sweatpants and leads him forward into a lazy grind, fingers teasing the skin of his taint through the fabric of his boxer briefs.
Donghyuck is the one hiding in Mark’s neck now. His mouth falls open against Mark’s shoulder, warming and wetting the fabric of his shirt as he mumbles incoherent moans when they both slowly fill in inside their pants.
That’s all it takes to get Donghyuck begging. The hard length of Mark’s dick slotted along his through layers of clothes, and the faint brush of Mark’s thumb across his hole, over his underwear.
“Inside,” Donghyuck gasps against Mark’s jaw, mouth climbing up the skin so he can suck on Mark’s bottom lip, ass pushing back into Mark’s fingers. “Please, hyung. I want—”
Mark shushes him with his tongue. He drinks up Donghyuck’s pitched complaint when his hand leaves Donghyuck’s ass, and keeps him kiss-stupid as he pours lube on his right hand behind Donghyuck’s back.
He lets the sticky foil fall on the clean tiled floor once it’s squeezed empty. Still tonguing at Donghyuck’s parted lips, lapping behind his teeth, Mark hooks both thumbs into the waistband of his sweatpants and yanks them down.
He doesn’t strip Donghyuck down completely, only tucks pants and boxers under the swell of Donghyuck’s ass and kneads the warm flesh, letting his fingertips breach in between his cheeks. Donghyuck mewls into Mark’s mouth, pushes forward with stuttery hips until Mark’s thigh slots between his, desperate to rub his trapped dick against anything.
Getting Donghyuck loose is so easy like this.
They are both drowsy with the heavy-minding mix of alcohol and lust, thoughts too clouded and hands too clumsy to put real effort into it. Donghyuck kisses Mark sloppily, with his arms around Mark’s broad shoulders for balance and his hands running through his hair, palms rubbing up and down his trimmed haircut because the tickling feels nice on his skin. Mark lets himself be kissed, keeps his mouth open so Donghyuck can lick into him and suck on his tongue, all the while he prods at Donghyuck’s hole blindly and slowly, pushing his index finger a little deeper each time, ‘till he’s buried tight to the last knuckle.
Somewhere between the second and third finger, Donghyuck gets too eager, needs way more than Mark’s mouth and hair.
He arches his back backward, trying to get a hand between their bodies without taking his mouth and hips off of Mark’s. His fingers slide down Mark’s front, stroking and gripping and scratching at everything they find. He palms at the taut muscle of Mark’s abs, smiles into another wet kiss when Mark sucks in his stomach at the grind of Donghyuck’s thigh against his dick.
“Want my hands on you, hyung?” he asks, pecking Mark below his mouth, on his chin, on the side of his neck. “Wanna watch as I jerk you off, huh?”
Donghyuck still talks with that lilting thing to his voice, like it’s all a game, or a dream, even though he couldn’t be any more real between Mark’s hands.
So Mark watches, just to make sure this isn’t a sick game of his silly, tipsy mind.
He drops his forehead on Donghyuck’s shoulder, and watches. He watches Donghyuck’s hands as they hook his pants and underwear under Mark’s balls, watches the redness of his own curved cock, the bead of precum that spurs from the tip at the brush of Donghyuck’s fingertips across the length, how it fills up Donghyuck’s palm perfectly, how it twitches with each slide down, each swipe of a finger over the shiny head.
They get each other off like that.
Mark doesn’t finger Donghyuck to adjust him to himself, he fingers him to come. He gets three fingers inside of him, bends his wrist in the angle that makes Donghyuck shudder, gets him desperate enough to start biting at Mark’s neck and chin, and goes at it slow and lazy, dragging it out ‘till his wrist hurts.
Donghyuck jerks Mark off in long, slow strokes. He keeps his grip lousy, squeezes only at the base, and lets go of him whenever Mark’s balls draw up and his stomach curves in, like he’s edging him. He spreads Mark’s precum all over his dick, gets him wet and sticky up to his navel, whispers, “Want you inside me so bad, hyung. So bad. I wanna feel you for days,” until it feels so good—gets so much—Mark has to shut him up with a kiss.
There are so many moles on Donghyuck’s sweaty, bloated, blushed face. Mark grabs him by the hair with his free hand, tugs at the strands so Donghyuck will stop sucking on his lips, and kisses each one of his moles.
It’s too sweet, maybe, when his dick is out and his fingers are buried into Donghyuck, but it gets Donghyuck’s eyes wet and puffy. So Mark does it again and again and again until—
“Donghyuck-ah,” he calls out, rubbed rough, dick sputtering in the circle of Donghyuck’s palm, toes curling inside his socks, against the tiles. And Donghyuck moans, drawn-out like his own name is the dirtiest thing Mark could ever say to him. “Donghyuck. You close?”
Red to the tip of his nose, Donghyuck nods. “Yeah.”
He groans when Mark slips his fingers out, a throaty thing that makes his entire body shake. And he wiggles, hips moving back and forth, like he doesn’t know where he needs the friction more.
“Me too. I wanna come on your ass. That cool?”
“Yes,” Donghyuck says, more of a gasp than a word. Then, “Yes, yes. Fuck yes.”
Four of them. One for each mole on Mark’s face.
So Mark gets his dirty hands on Donghyuck’s hips and turns them around.
He bends Donghyuck over the counter, pulls his pants further down, and takes him in.
It’s crazy how he’s got these moles everywhere. On the small of his back, on the bump of his tailbone, three on the back of his right thigh and two on the back of the left, five total scattered over his ass. The sight of him makes Mark leak again.
Mark fists Donghyuck’s shirt in his left hand and holds it up between his shoulder blades, exposing the arch of his back. The fabric is damp with sweat, and Mark can feel Donghyuck’s body tugging at the seams with each labored breath he lets out, breathing hard into the marble top, where he’s sprawled waist-up.
With his other hand, Mark glides his fingers down Donghyuck’s spine, bump by bump, until he reaches the swell of his ass. He cups him gently, his dick twitching at the choked noise Donghyuck makes, and thumbs at the beauty marks there the way he did with Donghyuck’s face earlier.
“You have these moles everywhere,” he says, thumb digging into flesh, spreading Donghyuck open. “Makes me wanna kiss you all over.”
Donghyuck lets out a high-pitched whine. His bare feet slide over the tiles like he is trying to open himself up further for Mark.
“Please, hyung. I need to come. I’m gonna pass out if you don’t—”
Mark shushes him quiet. He lets go of Donghyuck’s shirt so he can fist himself with one hand and keep Donghyuck spread open with the other, and strokes himself off like that.
It doesn’t take much more than a bunch of fast, tight-gripped slides for Mark to come all over Donghyuck’s ass, on the small of his back, dripping down his thighs. He comes for a long time, tummy sucked in, thighs tense, balls twitching, with his fingers digging into Donghyuck’s flesh until it turns red, staining his moles white.
And Donghyuck moans the whole time as he jerks himself in erratic strokes, but it’s not enough.
“Hyung,” he whines, pushed up on his elbow to glance at Mark over his shoulder, eyes shiny. “Please. Inside. Please, Mark—”
Mark shushes him again, bends forward so he can press his mouth between Donghyuck’s shoulder blades despite the dampness of his shirt.
He gets one arm around Donghyuck’s waist to keep him still, and strokes him again with his other hand, from his tailbone down to the back of his right thigh, getting his hand wet and sticky with his own come. Then, he slides back inside of Donghyuck blindly, easily.
Mark presses kisses to the sweaty back of Donghyuck’s neck as he finger-fucks his cum into him, even if he gets hair strands inside his mouth and a sprain on his wrist.
Donghyuck comes clenching around Mark’s three fingers, open-mouthed on the marble top, spilling all over his own fist and onto the cabinet doors. Mark keeps touching him through it, pushing in and out, in and out, in and out with his ear pressed to Donghyuck’s back, listening to his heart go wild when he curls his fingers just right.
He doesn’t stop until Donghyuck flinches away from him with an over-stimmed groan, reduced to a puddle of sweaty clothes and messy hair and shaking thighs.
Mark takes a wobbly step backward. The kitchen tiles tilt under his feet for a second before they still again, steadying everything around him with a brand-new clarity.
The counter is wet and stained white. One glass tipped over without him realizing, now the marble is splashed red. There is ice and lube on the floor. He is sweaty all over, his wrist hurts, he can feel teeth marks blooming on his neck.
Sober, that is how he feels. Both of alcohol and lust.
How many hours do they have left?
Mark pulls his pants up and around his waist. He watches Donghyuck turn and slump against the counter before he does the same, despite the mess on his ass and thighs and tummy and—
“You should clean yourself up,” Mark says.
He knows he’s fidgeting, fingers twisted together so he won’t reach out and get Donghyuck out of that dirty shirt himself. His eyes bounce all over the kitchen, take in all the things he has to clean up, all the stuff he needs to fix before his alarm goes off.
There is so much, Mark doesn’t even know where he should start counting.
“Yeah, you can use the shower. You know where it is. And I—while you do it, I can clean up this mess. I’ve got it. You go and grab some fresh clothes and—”
“Hyung.”
Mark shuts himself up. He looks at Donghyuck again, who is still blushing and boneless, and already looking back.
“Yeah?”
“C’mere.” Donghyuck offers him a hand, and Mark takes it because why wouldn’t—how couldn’t—he?
He lets himself be pulled closer until they are almost standing chest to chest again.
Donghyuck’s touch is so gentle. He holds Mark’s hand like one would do a prince’s, strokes his thumb across Mark’s knuckles before he slips it between his fingers, caressing the inside of Mark’s middle finger slowly.
Mark has a mole there. He remembers now because he always forgets, if that makes sense. Donghyuck never forgets, though. Not this, not anything.
“Come here,” Donghyuck repeats, and tugs Mark even closer.
He guides Mark’s arms around his own body before he lets go of his hands. Then, he throws his own arms over Mark’s shoulders and pushes himself closer, presses them both rib to rib.
Donghyuck hooks his chin on Mark’s shoulder and sighs, like settling down.
The hug is a tight squeeze, deliberately hard so Mark can feel Donghyuck’s chest expanding against his own through deep, slow breaths. Mark hears the air leaving Donghyuck’s lungs in his ear, feels the slow stroke of Donghyuck’s fingers up and down the back of his scalp, can smell the sex and sweat clinging to Donghyuck, and the sweetness of his perfume and alcohol still underneath.
Mark closes his eyes. He breathes in and breathes out.
(It was Paris. It was the Louvre. It was inside, on the back. It was Chenle with Mark, always willing to listen in silence whenever things got too loud for Mark inside of his own head.
“How did you realize?” he asked, standing before a work of art Mark can’t remember the name of. “That you love him. ‘Cause it’s new, isn’t it?”
What was new? The love or the realization? Mark never asked.
“I don’t know. He slows things down, I guess,” he said, fingers pressed to his temple. “Like, inside. Does that make sense?”)
Mark breathes in and breathes out, and doesn’t know for how long nor how many times, because he forgets to count.
“Let’s jump in the shower together and then get into bed, yeah?” Donghyuck says, still wrapped around Mark like bindweed. “I’ll set an alarm a little earlier and we can clean this up in the morning when we wake up. It’s alright.”
Mark breathes in and breathes out. He leans back, searching.
There are one, two, three, four, five, six moles on Donghyuck’s face. Mark has kissed them all. One of them is on his bottom lip. Mark is dying to kiss it again.
“We?” he asks.
Donghyuck smiles with the tip of his tongue between his teeth. Eyes-mouth-eyes.
“Yeah, we.”
Mark’s got a mole on his lower lip, too. It’s right on the bottom edge, on the left. Donghyuck is still smiling when he kisses it.
What time is it again?